The start of this year has been a bit weird for me, photographically speaking. I haven’t taken a large number of photographs for various reasons. The terrible weather being one of them. However, over the first six months, I have taken a few street photos, and while there aren’t many, I thought I would share them here.

I’ve been going back over old photos in my library and pondering the past year. I actually got out to take photos quite a bit this year, but I have been really bad at sharing the projects that I was shooting. These include photographing a local stately garden throughout the seasons, visiting a national park at sunrise and sunset and a trip to Scotland to see lough ness. So, as they’ll never see the internet light of day otherwise, here’s a quick overview and some images I took over the past year.

As the last vestiges of summer have now long faded away, my favourite time of the year for photography has come. I love Autumn, and indeed winter, for shooting street photography, because of the light. The low sun here in Ireland creates a beautiful golden character to the light and as the season turns from Autumn to Winter, and the sun gets lower, you get beautiful long deep shadows.

I haven’t really been taking that many photos over the past few months for various reasons, which has been a bit frustrating for me. I do have a little collection that has been slowly gathering over the past few months, and so it’s time to resurrect a long-running series, that I used to do ages ago: “Random Acts of Photography”.

As spring gives way to summer here in Ireland, and the cold dark rainy days give way to bright rainy days, I’ve been slowly getting back into street photography. I have only really dabbled since the pandemic began and for most of 2020 I didn’t really shoot much at all. I’ve been getting back into it bit by bit, and recently, I headed out with my trusty Sony A6000 to get some street shots, and to shoot an episode of Street Photo Diary.

After the incident I had the last time I was out shooting Street Photography, I have been finding it hard to get back to shooting. The attack put me off wanting to do street photography at all, having both shattered my confidence and also my motivation. But slowly I’ve ben trying o make myself get back out there, and this Saturday, I finally did my first street shoot in a while. 

Back in June I spent a week in New York, and while I was there I didn’t do much photography, as I was mainly there for a holiday, and also I was recovering from a bad chest infection that I had had the previous month. Even so, I couldn’t resist the call of the camera, so I still managed to get some shots in.

Sometimes when I’m out shooting street photography, I will go out with a theme in mind. Other times, it will just sort of happen organically. I was walking through Dublin in May, and it was still pretty cold for that time of the year, yet there were lots and lots of tourists around and tour groups. I am actually fascinated by how other people view my home town, and when shooting street photography here I try to capture that. In this case, I seemed to gravitate towards catching the expressions of people enjoying their visit to Ireland, and the occasional local who got caught up in the mix too.

Summer finally arrived in Ireland last week. It only lasted for a day or two, but we enjoyed it while it lasted! It’s actually been really cold so far through most of June, but we did have a few hot days, and so I headed out to see how people were enjoying the sunshine.

I hadn’t had a chance to shoot some street photography in nearly a month, so I was happy to get out and shoot again. I wanted to try and practice and change up the way I shoot a bit, especially for street photography. I wanted to focus on things like shadows, and reflections, and be on the look out for something different to the type of things I normally shoot. I wasn’t hugely successful in changing my habits, but I still got a couple of shots I’m really happy with.

Spring has arrived in the city with an unusually warm couple of days, and it really showed on the faces of the people as they went about their daily lives. The ever changing beat of the city seemed more alive, and everyone from the tourists to the locals seemed to be enjoying the nice weather.

As Autumn draws to a close here in Dublin, and the first days of winter begin to take hold, the cold days have one big plus for photography: the light is absolutely gorgeous. The low sun of the northern(ish) latitude brings with it beautiful long shadows and a golden light, while the skies take on a deep hue.

It was a bank holiday weekend here in Dublin this weekend, and as is traditional at the start of August, many people were away on holidays. The result of this is that the city was unusually quiet. I had headed out to shoot an episode of my “Street Photo Diary” companion video series and while I normally complain about how busy it is, for once it was nearly too quiet.

There was a sudden heat wave here in Dublin over the weekend, and so I took the opportunity to head into the city to shoot some street photography. It’s the beginning of May, and while most of the year is tourist season in Dublin, it begins in earnest at this time of the year. The city was really busy, and so that presented some interesting opportunities for photography, as well as challenges. 

I was passing through a very sunny London city twice over the last week. On each occasion, I was only there for a day or so, and so I didn’t have a lot of time for photography, but I still managed to squeeze an hour or two in on both trips. I hadn’t really intended to shoot street photography specifically, but it sort of ended up that way. I was originally planning to do more “travel photography” style shots, and I was also shooting a video for my new travel vlog series, but in the process of trying to avoid the typical shots of London everyone takes, I somehow ended up shooting street photography. I was actually really lucky with some of the shots too.

I had set out to shoot some street photography for my companion video series, and I was using an older camera for this shoot. I started off in some of the quite parts of Dublin city, looking for details and any kind of quirky objects or scenes that I might come across. Despite having shot around Dublin city for years, I still find all the little things you can see hidden in plain sight quite interesting.

A few weeks ago, I was up and out early into the city to shoot some things for my Streets of Dublin project, and while I was there I ended up shooting a lot of street photography too. What was funny though was that, as it was early in the morning, people were heading to work and the mood was quite different from how it is later in the day. For a start everyone was walking with haste and with a real sense of purpose.

After a topsy turvy weather ride this year, we finally had a few nice and sunny days here in Dublin, and I made sure to make the best of them. I managed to spend a good bit of time out shooting some street shots and I finally feel that my mojo is starting to come back a little.

As I mentioned on my main blog recently, I've been scanning in lots of my old negatives and slide film recently. One of the patterns that's emerged from looking at my old shots is that I had an interest in Street Photography even from the early days of my photographic interests. Of course I didn't know it was a genre called "Street Photograhy" at the time. I just like taking pictures around the city. Most of these were taken between 15-20 years ago, on my trusty Canon Eos 5.

Summer has come to Ireland, and unusually we're having a prolonged spell of good weather. The up side of that, for the photographer is that with it comes some really nice light, at least if you know where to look. The other advantage, well for me anyway, is that it makes me get out. I fond it hard to look outside and see the beautiful sunshine, and not take my camera and go outside.